The foundations rest on 1,062 high-capacity steel piles driven 83.5 m (274 ft) deep in the ground to compensate for poor upper-strata soil conditions. At the time of construction, these were the longest steel piles ever used for a land-based building. The piles are capped by a 4 m-thick concrete raft 19.6 m (64 ft) underground. The basement's surrounding slurry wall is 1 m thick, 36 m high and 568 m long. It is composed of 20,500 m3 (720,000 cu ft) of reinforced concrete.

Official dedication was August 28, 1998, a date also chosen with the number 8 in mind. The building was fully operational in 1999. The Jin Mao Tower is owned by the China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd (formerly China Shanghai Foreign Trade Centre Co. Ltd). It reportedly has a daily maintenance cost of 1 million RMB (US$121,000).[5]

The four mechanical stories forming the spire of the building are brightly illuminated at night.

The building has 3 main entrances to the lobby: two for the office portion and one for the hotel. The basement has express elevators to the observation deck and a parking area for 600 vehicles and 7,500 bicycles. In total, 61 Mitsubishi elevators and 19 escalators carry visitors throughout the building. Levels 51, 52, and 89–93 are mechanical floors, accessible only by service elevators.

The 3-level basement has a food court, while the first two floors include the Hyatt's conference and banquet facilities. The first six floors include a shopping mall, restaurants, and nightclubs, include Pu-J's.

The lower 50 floors (in the first 4 segments of the tower) are made up of 123,000 m2 (1,320,000 sq ft) of offices, divided into 5 elevator zones (3-6, 7-17, 18-29, 30-40, and 41-50). Office spaces are open-plan (column-free), with a floor-to-floor gross height of 4.0 m (13.1 ft) and net height of 2.7 m (8 ft 10 in).

The building's anchor tenant is the five-star 555-room Grand Hyatt Shanghai hotel which occupies floors 53 to 87. It is one of the highest hotels in the world, second in Shanghai only to its sister property, the Shanghai Park Hyatt, occupying the 79th to 93rd floors of the immediately adjacent Shanghai World Financial Center. These have since been surpassed by The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, which occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Centre. However, the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel is the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai.[6] Additionally, the world's longest laundry chute runs down the full length of the tower to the basement, incorporating buffers to slow the laundry during its descent.

The hotel's atrium, viewed from the Skywalk on the 88th floor.

The Hyatt's famous barrel-vaultedatrium starts at the 56th floor and extends upwards to the 87th. Lined with 28 annular corridors and staircases arrayed in a spiral, it is 27 m (89 ft) in diameter with a clear height of approximately 115 m (377 ft).[7] It is one of the tallest atria in the world, the tallest being the Burj Al Arab's.

The Skywalk, a 1,520 m2 (16,400 sq ft) indoor observation deck with a capacity of 1,000+ people, occupies the 88th floor of the building. In addition to the panoramic views of Shanghai, it offers a topside view of the hotel atrium below. It also includes a small post office. Access is through two express elevators from the basement that travel at 9.1 m/s and take 45 seconds to reach the top. As of 2009, admission to the 88th floor costs 88 RMB for adults and 45 RMB for children.

On February 18, 2001, Han Qizhi, a 31-year-old shoe salesman from Anhui province "struck by a rash impulse", climbed the building barehanded and in street clothes.[8] He was arrested with bleeding hands and detained for about two weeks.[9]

On October 5, 2004, as part of Shanghai's National Day celebrations, a multi-national group of BASE jumpers invited by the Shanghai Sports Bureau leapt from the top of the tower. The 34-year-old Australian jumper Roland Simpson's parachute malfunctioned and he crashed himself against an adjacent building. He fell into a coma and died in Australia on October 22.[10][11]

On April 3, 2009, Shanda used a laser-light show on the tower to advertise the open beta of Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The image made by the lasers could be seen from 7:30 pm to 10:00 pm and ran until April 12, 2009.[16]